haking her head.
"That's why I practise it. Double lessons? I'll warrant you! this is the
second time I have been down here to-night, for example; other things in
proportion." She waved her hand, and fell to again at her pie.

Peggy had been sitting open-eyed, watching this singular person, not
knowing what to say. Now, however, meeting the solemn gaze of the large
sad eyes, she felt compelled to speech.

"It--it's delicious!" she said, timidly. "Wouldn't you rather sit in a
chair, Miss--" she hesitated, not liking to say "Grace."

"Oh, dear!" said Bertha, still put out. "You make me forget my manners
and everything, Grace. Peggy, this is Miss Grace Wolfe; Grace, Miss
Peggy Montfort."

"Charmed!" said Miss Wolfe. "But we have met before, Fluffy, or I should
not have descended."

"We met, 'twas on a rope,
And I thought she had done me;
I felt, I could not feel,
For my fate was upon me.

"If it hadn't been for your possession of peas, you would have beaten
me, Miss Montfort. As it was, here's to our next meeting under the
ceiling!" She took a large bite of pie, and regarded Peggy benevolently.

"Of peas?" repeated Peggy, vaguely, feeling that this might be English,
but was not sense.

"Precisely. _Avoir du pois_, literally, to possess a pea! The French
language. But you should have seen Vexation!" this strange person added,
turning to Bertha. "Did see her? Well, she was a pleasant sight. Noxious
animal, Vexation! It is a joy to see her taken down occasionally."

"I notice you are good friends enough, where any mischief is afoot!"
said Bertha, bluntly. She broke a corner off the pie, and added, "Goat,
this is mince pie!"

"It is! it is!" said Miss Wolfe. "Ever discriminating, my own! And good?
Say it is good, Fluffy!"

"Yes, it is uncommonly good!" said Bertha. "Where did you get it? You've
no business to have it, of course!"

"I got it out of a bandbox, sweet one!" replied Grace Wolfe. "It
lives--they live, I should say, for there are three of them, thanks be
to praise!--in a bandbox. A round one, or, to be more exact, oval in
form, covered with wall-paper, whereon purple scrolls dispute the
mastery with pink lozenges. It's the sweetest thing in bandboxes that
I've seen since time was."

"Yes, but the pies!"

"The pies! as I was saying, three of them; ample, full moons of rapture!

"They came in beauty, side by side,
They filled one home with g